Moral mandates in Europe

Our Prime Minister thinks the plurality (largest single) party has some form of moral authority to govern. I think he should tell that to:

Fredrik Reinfeldt, Prime Minister of Sweden

Erna Solberg, Prime Minister of Norway

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Prime Minister of Denmark

All of these leaders currently head coalitions that exclude the largest party in their country's Parliament.

In proportional representation elections, it is quite normal for a government to be formed without the plurality party - three out of the four Scandinavian countries have that situation right now. And I’ll bet there was very little hand wringing about morals once the votes were in.

John Key should quit living in the FPP past. Individual party totals don’t mean much in MMP – coalition totals are what matter.